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Germany has expelled two Russian diplomats in response to what the German authorities described as Russia’s refusal to cooperate in a high-profile murder.
German intelligence and law enforcement agencies said that the killing of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old former Chechen rebel commander, who was shot in the head from behind in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten park in August, was carried out by Russian agents on Kremlin’s orders.
Germany has expelled two Russian diplomats in response to what the German
authorities described as Russia’s refusal to cooperate in a
high-profile murder.
German prosecutors said that the Kremlin ordered the killing after requests
from the Russian puppet regime that now rules Chechnya.
The facts so far:
· Prosecutors said there is “sufficient
evidence” to indicate that the man’s murder was carried out on the behalf of
the Russian state or by Chechnya.
· The German Foreign Ministry also announced
that two employees at Russia’s embassy in Berlin had been designated personae
non grata and were expelled.
· The names and positions of the diplomats
were not given, although the ministry said it took the move after Russian
authorities failed to “cooperate sufficiently” in the
murder investigation.
· Russia’s foreign ministry called the expulsion
move an “unfriendly, groundless step” and vowed to respond.
Immediately after the killing, the Berlin police detained a 49-year-old
Russian national who rode a bicycle next to the victim, shooting him in the
head and chest.
Khangoshvili, a Georgian of Chechen descent who was a commander of Chechen
anti-Russian forces who fought Russia for the independence of Chechnya from
Russia during the Second Chechen War from 1999 to 2009, was “classified as a
terrorist by Russian authorities and persecuted as such,” according to
German prosecutors.
He applied for asylum in Germany in 2016 after several attempts on his life,
while he was living in Georgia, failed. DW notes that
his asylum application was denied and he was slated for deportation.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer welcomed the federal prosecutor’s
decision to take on the murder case. “That says something about the
significance of this crime. The government is still discussing what further
consequences we will draw from this,” he told a press conference
in Berlin.”
Federal prosecutors in Germany take over investigations when there is a
strong suspicion of involvement by a foreign state.
The Khangoshvili case follows more than a dozen cases in which critics and
opponents of Vladimir Putin were assassinated both inside Russia and abroad.
Last year, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned
with a nerve agent on British soil.
Source: Homeland Security News Wire Most popular online casino in Canada
